Text Size

McGovern's daughter, Ann McGovern of Sioux Falls, has said her father was admitted Tuesday for tests to determine why he occasionally passes out and loses his ability to speak.

McGovern splits his time between Florida and South Dakota, where he was a congressman from 1957 to 1961 and a U.S. senator from 1963 to 1981. He has been hospitalized several times in recent months.

He was treated for exhaustion in Sioux Falls in October after he completed a lecture tour. Two months later, he fell and hit his head, just before he was to be interviewed on C-SPAN for a program called "The Contenders" that focused on failed presidential candidates who had a lasting impact on American politics.

McGovern lost in a historic landslide in his 1972 challenge to President Richard Nixon, who eventually resigned amid the Watergate scandal. Most of his work in recent years has focused on world hunger.

He and former Republican U.S. Sen. Bob Dole were honored in 2008 with the World Food Prize. Their George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Nutrition Program, established in 2000 and funded primarily through Congress, provides millions of meals to children in the U.S. and some three dozen other countries.